Congress
Shutdown blame game engulfs Capitol as hopes to avert shutdown fade
The shutdown blame game has already begun on Capitol Hill, a telltale sign that lawmakers don’t expect they can clear a funding plan before the Friday night deadline.
Republicans’ revamped attempt at a stopgap spending bill is headed to the House floor Thursday evening but it’s almost certainly doomed, given it needs to meet a two-thirds threshold to pass the chamber and Democrats have vocally opposed it.
Democrats have already dubbed it the Elon Musk shutdown, given the billionaire publicly excoriated the original bipartisan spending deal and helped tank it on Wednesday. And Republicans are coming out swinging against Democrats after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged his fellow Democrats to vote against the new, hastily assembled package.
“If the government shuts down because Hakeem Jeffries tells his people not to vote for it, the Democrat party in the House of Representatives will be directly responsible for shutting the government down and destroying American agriculture. Period,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said Thursday afternoon.
Republicans — trying to placate Donald Trump, who had also denounced the previous funding deal for being too kind to Democrats — had worked out the funding deal among their own party and did not involve Democrats. But GOP lawmakers argued that the bill, which still included more than $100 billion in disaster aid, didn’t include provisions that were objectionable to Democrats, and took into account bipartisan negotiations on the previous version.
“It’s interesting that Democrats are now saying that they don’t want a government shutdown. Yet they’re going to vote against it, and a lot of it was already negotiated with Democrats,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.).
Democrats are fuming at Republicans for throwing out a bipartisan agreement that took weeks to negotiate, instead working out a new deal only within their own party and ignoring the reality that Democrats control the Senate and the White House for another month. And many of them are blaming Musk, as well as the so-called Department of Government Efficiency that he will lead next year.
“Elon Musk ordered his puppet President-elect and House Republicans to break the bipartisan agreement reached to keep government open,” wrote former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on social media Thursday evening. “House Republicans are abdicating their responsibility to the American people and siding with billionaires and special interests.”
It’s a long-running tradition in Washington to blame the other party for shutting down the government. But it’s a terrible sign for anyone hoping to actually avoid the shutdown, signaling that lawmakers are at a standoff and aren’t confident they can come to a deal before the deadline on Friday at midnight. Democrats keep calling on Republicans to return to the previous deal, while Republicans are planning another go at their own agreement if and when it fails Thursday evening.
In a divided Congress, one month before a presidential transition and less than a week before Christmas, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
“I think what Republicans are trying to do here is clearly tee this up and make it easier for reconciliation next year, but to put this on at this point without consulting us or talking to us is just pretty unfortunate. We had a deal, it was a bipartisan deal, it’s a four corners deal, they should honor the deal,” said Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.).
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union, is also ready to place blame on the GOP, already labeling anticipated mass furloughs of their members the “DOGE shutdown.” And Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, unleashed on the House floor ahead of the vote on the reworked spending bill.
“House Republicans are responsible for any harm and uncertainty brought upon the American people and should some get their wish for a month-long government shutdown,” she said.
Daniella Diaz, Hailey Fuchs and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
John Thune is stuck in between President Donald Trump’s demands and the realities of Senate math.
Thune has eight days to appease the president who wants to see the framework for a third GOP bill advance before senators break for summer recess.
But the Senate majority leader in an interview with Jordain says he doesn’t have the 50 votes needed to adopt the budget plan right now. And he’s uncertain the president would be happy with the substantially watered-down form of the election security bill — the SAVE America Act — that Trump sees as the centerpiece of the measure.
“I think the question at the end is, is that going to be satisfactory to him?” Thune said. “And so we’re still trying to figure that out.”
Around the same time, Trump was in the Oval Office insisting Thune “has the votes” to kill the Senate’s longstanding filibuster and pass the elections bill. He went on to sow doubt on whether he believed Thune was fit to lead Republicans.
“We will find out, and I will let you know,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.
The White House, meanwhile, sent a number of Trump officials to lobby for Reconciliation 3.0 Wednesday, but they struggled to squash GOP senators’ skepticism about the administration’s vision.
Republicans laid out for officials the political complications of taking up the House-passed $95 billion budget resolution in their chamber. Senate Budget Chair Ron Johnson, for example, said including the SAVE America provisions in the Senate — unlike in the House — could involve more committees and open up the range of issues Democrats would be able to force politically troublesome votes on.
“I think we all hate vote-a-rama,” Johnson added. “Some people are more sensitive to the kind of votes they have to take.”
Meanwhile, some senate want more military spending than the $60 billion House Republicans laid out in their own framework.
“I think we have challenges that need to be met,” Sen. Jerry Moran said after a closed-door Senate GOP meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “The process is going to be difficult.”
The bottom line: taking up the party-line bill is a political minefield for GOP senators less than 100 days from the midterms, and Thune said the Republican-on-Republican attacks aren’t helping.
“Let’s try and win some seats in both the House and the Senate, and let’s use this issue to our advantage instead of using it to beat each other up,” Thune said.
What else we’re watching:
— BLANCHE VOTE POSTPONED: Senate Judiciary delayed plans to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general today after key GOP holdouts failed to reach an agreement with the administration on preconditions for their support. Sen. John Cornyn was explicit on the legal language he needed from Blanche to revise a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS by Wednesday afternoon to secure his vote. Sen. Thom Tillis, another member of the panel with concerns about the settlement, said he would follow Cornyn’s lead.
— SENATE STOPGAP TAKES SHAPE: Senate leaders are leaning toward a Dec. 11 shutdown deadline for the stopgap government funding patch they want to pass next week, according to two people familiar with the discussions. That’s one week later than the Dec. 4 date House Republicans put in the bare-bones version they passed last week. Top senators are still working to finalize a bipartisan agreement on their plan to keep federal agencies funded beyond the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.
Katherine Tully-McManus, Chris Marquette and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
John Thune is eager to let GOP senators out of the Capitol and onto the campaign trail as Republicans fight to hold the Senate majority in November. First, he has to get through the next eight days.
The majority leader is hoping to fund the government, confirm dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees and hand him new powers to punish Russia’s trading partners before letting his members leave for a five-week recess. But Trump has turned Thune’s exit strategy into a cascading political test.
The vise-like pressure campaign was playing out as Thune sat down with Blue Light News in his Capitol office Wednesday. At about the same moment, Trump was in the Oval Office insisting Thune “has the votes” to kill the Senate’s long-standing filibuster rule and pass a GOP elections bill. He went on to sow doubt as to whether he felt Thune was fit to lead the chamber’s Republicans.
“We will find out, and I will let you know,” Trump told reporters.
Unaware of Trump’s latest attacks, Thune in the interview nonetheless repeated that, no, he does not have anywhere near the votes to kill the filibuster or pass the SAVE America Act — the partisan elections bill Trump is pushing for. And he spoke frankly about the political risk Trump and other Republicans who are training their fire inward are assuming.
“I feel like we’re as well positioned as we can be,” Thune said of the midterm landscape, but “what we’ve got to do is just make the overarching narrative one that has us drawing contrast with our Democrat opponents rather than us shooting each other.” He held out hope that Trump would do just that as Election Day approaches.
The frustration with Trump’s intraparty attacks is widely shared among Thune’s colleagues but has been most frequently voiced by GOP members who are retiring or are otherwise insulated from Trump’s staggering political influence, like Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
Tillis downplayed Trump’s latest attacks Wednesday, chalking it up to the “typical tug and pull” among Republicans rather than a reflection of the president’s specific views on Thune.
Thune has up to this point acted more as a lightning rod for his conference, which is a traditional role for congressional leaders. But typically they attract bolts from the other party, not their own president.
In the interview Wednesday, Thune said he and Trump “get along” even as he acknowledged that he’s bearing the brunt of the president’s frustrations with the Senate’s inability to bend reality to his whims.
“He gets obviously frustrated with me because he sees me as the person that’s the impediment to some of the things he wants to get done. But as I continually point out … I don’t make this stuff up,” he said. “Math is math, arithmetic is arithmetic. … And part of it, too, is the active role he played in some of these primaries.”
“He thinks I can wave the magic wand,” he added. “I wish it were that easy.”
What has made things more challenging in recent weeks has been the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump confidant who was able to have frank conversations with the president about the realities of the Senate.
“He was a great intermediary, whisperer, whatever you want to call it,” Thune said. “But yeah, it’s a real loss. I do think that he had the kind of relationship where he could speak bluntly, candidly, directly, and the president would accept it.”
He added there are conversations now happening about “how to better have a better line of communication” between Senate Republicans and Trump’s orbit. Just after sitting down with Blue Light News, he met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
“We’ve got some people that can step into that role,” Thune said.
If the SAVE America Act was the only Trump-obsession Thune had to manage, it would be one thing, but the debate over the bill — which Thune supports — is also tied to Republicans’ attempt to enact a new party-line spending bill, which could include some election-related grant funding.
House Republicans managed to muscle through a $95 billion budget blueprint, but the path in the Senate is murky at best. Thune is dealing with deficit hawks who want at least part of the spending offset with cuts, defense hawks who want more Pentagon funding, and members who aren’t convinced there should be any bill at all.
But the White House is keeping the pressure on: Trump himself issued a public call for action on Truth Social Wednesday morning, and budget director Russ Vought pushed senators to move quickly in a private lunch just hours later.
Speaking in the interview shortly after the lunch, Thune said the budget blueprint Trump and his deputies are hoping to pass doesn’t currently have the votes to be approved. But he left the door open to a potential breakthrough before the end of next week while also acknowledging possible Plan Bs that could release at least some of the mounting pressure — possibly by putting pieces of the elections bill up for a vote.
“The question is, do we … trigger a vote on photo ID, put it on the floor, have a debate about it?” he said. “Those things are all kind of [things] we’re giving consideration to. But at the end of the day, does it change the outcome? I can’t see it.”
Thune also effectively ruled out holding a test vote on killing the filibuster. He warned that forcing what would essentially be symbolic votes would risk dividing Republicans while serving no practical end.
“You end up … basically for the 60 or 90 days heading into an election, fighting among Republicans, which to me seems really counterproductive, going into an election that’s pretty high-stakes,” Thune said.
Instead, Thune wants to make progress on other fronts. In addition to the sanctions bill, Thune wants to pass legislation funding the government past November — something virtually unheard of in July but something that he says is “trending in the right direction” nevertheless.
He’s also got nominees to confirm, and he’s looking to at least take an initial step on a cryptocurrency bill or college sports legislation. It’s an ambitious schedule for a month in the Senate, much less a week — especially when the president has his own priorities.
But Thune has consistently paid heed to his own constituency — the Republican senators who elected him to stay focused, put legislative wins on the board, and keep the GOP in the majority.
Thune has said he is planning to run for leader again in November, and most Senate Republicans believe he’s secure in his job.
Asked about the Oval Office comments later Wednesday evening, Thune initially danced around Trump’s equivocal assessment of whether he was “the man for the job” of leading the Senate GOP.
“That’s a decision that’s made by my colleagues,” he said.
But in subsequent comments, Thune joked that if Trump “could find somebody else to do this job, it might be a big relief.”
“It is what it is,” he added. “You just roll with it.”
Efforts to pass legislation governing the nation’s $19 billion college sports industry are teetering amid a fierce lobbying fight over media rights and antitrust protections.
The Protect College Sports Act advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee on a 19-9 vote last month that pulled in seven Democrats. It was a hopeful moment for advocates of the Senate’s yearslong legislative push to regulate college athletics after the 2021 landmark Supreme Court decision that ultimately led to the NCAA allowing college athletes to profit off of their name, image and likeness.
But nine people close to the process say Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) have struggled to secure support among key industry players, including the Big Ten Conference and the Southeastern Conference, and universities are pushing for major changes to the bill before it’s brought to the floor.
With just a handful of legislative days left before the Senate leaves town for August recess, universities are on the cusp of starting another school year governed by a patchwork of state laws and court rulings that they say is financially unsustainable.
“It would be challenging for me to imagine supporting it if the Big Ten Conference and our two member universities in the state aren’t supportive,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) said of Cruz’s bill.
The bill, which lays out guidelines for everything from student athlete pay to negotiating broadcast rights, has languished amid pushback from the Big Ten and the SEC, the nation’s two most powerful college sports conferences. They’re zeroing in on a section allowing conferences to jointly negotiate their media rights, insisting it include explicit language clarifying that such action is voluntary.
Supporters of that “media pooling” provision argue it would bring stability to the industry by distributing streaming revenue more evenly across conferences, helping them absorb costs associated with the new era of paying student athletes outright. But the Big Ten and the SEC, which stand to lose the competitive edge their member schools reap from lucrative TV contracts, worry it would force them to share revenue with rival conferences — and they’re not the only ones taking issue with the section.
“We were unclear why the [media pooling provision] needed to be in this bill,” said Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman, who represents schools that could stand to profit from jointly negotiating media rights. “We’re not convinced that’s the magic wand.”
Ackerman said she had not yet seen modeling that proved media pooling would significantly increase revenue, adding that she had “all sorts of questions” around the provision that the committee had not answered.
Lawmakers have inched closer to bringing the SEC and the Big Ten on board in recent days, according to people directly engaged on the bill, but a deal remains elusive. Cruz and Cantwell hosted a call Sunday night with several commissioners and Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua alongside Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, one of the bill’s Democratic cosponsors.
“For how many conversations we have had with the Cruz and Cantwell team, I would say we’ve made stunningly little progress,” said one lobbyist directly engaged on the bill who was granted anonymity to describe private deliberations.
But Cruz regularly projects optimism that the bill is nearly ready. Asked if he was concerned about Republican votes for the bill if the two major conferences were not on board, he said no, adding that 70 percent of the committee voted for it.
“I think we will see something comparable on the floor next week,” he told Blue Light News on Wednesday. “I believe we’re going to pass this bill, and we’re going to see a large bipartisan vote on the floor of the Senate.”
Cruz has poured renewed energy into the effort to get the bill across the finish line in recent days, penning an op-ed in USA Today and meeting with other lawmakers including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, according to one person familiar with the matter.
Two people granted anonymity to share private discussions said Senate Majority Leader John Thune has expressed interest in moving the bill to the floor once it can get 60 votes.
Thune told reporters last week he thinks it’s unlikely PSCA will pass the Senate before August amid other major priorities on Blue Light News. But on Monday, he struck a slightly different tune, saying talks were “steering in a really good direction.” In a Wednesday interview with Blue Light News, Thune didn’t rule out teeing up the bill for the fall before the August break.
The Commerce panel has made some concessions to the conferences, including clarifying that schools can’t face litigation for declining to participate in media pooling, according to three people granted anonymity to describe private talks.
The lawmakers are also offering to provide schools with an additional $20 million pool of funds for retaining student athletes, in addition to $5 million specifically for name, image, likeness promotional opportunities in women’s sports, according to the people.
But new legislative text sent to the two conferences on Tuesday afternoon lacks several key demands that the SEC and the Big Ten say are critical to winning their support, including a provision clarifying that postseason tournaments and contests would be excluded from media pooling, according to a draft obtained by Blue Light News.
Complicating things further, the draft includes a blank section called “IGNITE HBCUs Sports and Media Act.”
“Major concessions were made overnight,” a committee aide told Blue Light News on Wednesday. “At this point, with every passing minute, odds are slimmer that we can move the bill before the August recess. We’ve been working night and day to make the revisions they said they needed, and we need an answer.”
The SEC has also pressed lawmakers on another priority: to insert “critical amendments” broadening antitrust and preemption language, according to University of Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman, who chairs a coalition of presidents and chancellors across the Southeastern Conference. This would shield the NCAA and conferences from certain antitrust lawsuits and block states from setting their own rules governing college athletics and athlete pay.
But the latest draft of the bill failed to meaningfully change those pieces of the legislation.
Cruz and Cantwell are also unlikely to win the support of a broad group of southern GOP senators without the backing of the SEC — a goal they continue to pursue regardless.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) said Tuesday she plans to offer an amendment ensuring some of its provisions apply to high school sports. Britt has yet to publicly declare her position on the package amid opposition from Auburn University and The University of Alabama, the largest universities in her home state.
“We don’t need to solve one problem in order to then create or leave a gap in another,” Britt said in an interview. “Additionally, I want to make sure that we still protect people’s ability to allow their programs and conferences to thrive, and I don’t think we’ve hit the mark on that just yet. But I certainly hope we can find a pathway forward.”
Britt’s fellow GOP senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville — the former head football coach at Auburn, University of Mississippi, Texas Tech and University of Cincinnati — has been vocal in his opposition to the bill.
Cruz and Cantwell have touted support for the legislation across two dozen conferences and more than 250 individual universities, plus organizations like the NFL Players Association and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
But many of these same groups are also expressing some qualms with the package’s current form.
One of those groups is Ackerman’s Big East conference, which consists of 11 universities including Georgetown and Villanova. Ackerman said while Big East ultimately thinks “it’s better to have the bill than not to have the bill,” several crucial sticking points remain.
That includes the fact that Cruz and Cantwell’s bill doesn’t address whether college athletes can be considered employees with bargaining rights — an omission Ackerman called “disappointing.”
The House’s college sports bill, the SCORE Act, explicitly barred college athletes from attaining employee status. It had the support of many of the industry’s largest conferences, including Big East, but failed to make it across the finish line amid opposition from hard-liners who argued the bill was too favorable to the NCAA.
“We’re trying to strike the right balance” with the remaining sticking points, said Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, one of the bill’s GOP cosponsors who has been in many of the recent meetings with Cruz and Cantwell. “There’s a lot of things going on. But I feel good about it — we’re trying to build as broad a coalition as possible.”
Cruz and Cantwell have also touted backing from Louisiana State University, pointing to its board chair Lee Mallett and president Wade Rousse as signatories on a June 1 letter expressing “enthusiastic support” for the bill.
But Mallett and Rousse later said they did not support Cruz and Cantwell’s Senate legislation. Mallett said he meant to support the House’s SCORE Act, not the Senate’s version, and Rousse said he never agreed to have his name signed onto the letter.
“While we appreciate all the efforts surrounding the Protect College Sports Act, we believe key issues remain with the legislation and we do not support the bill in its current form,” Rousse and Mallett wrote in a separate letter to the Commerce panel last week. Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy shared the letter on social media and said “LSU is right” to oppose the bill.
Supporters of the Protect College Sports Act applaud its provisions requiring agents to register with states and capping how much they can charge student athletes, along with the sections governing athlete compensation.
“The bill is not perfect, but it does address some very vital components in my mind that would improve the health of the college sports ecosystem,” West Coast Conference Commissioner Stu Jackson said in an interview.
Jackson, whose conference includes Gonzaga University and the University of Portland, said he would like to see the bill include limitations on expansion for larger conferences and a higher salary cap for student athletes, but he said talks with the Commerce panel about the bill had been “very productive.”
That’s not a view shared by multiple lobbyists representing college athletics conferences who are directly involved in talks about the bill.
“There’s not honest engagement or negotiation,” said a second lobbyist, granted anonymity to describe private discussions. “It’s really hard to get to a deal when there’s no trust, and there’s not a lot of trust right now.”
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
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